NM to file suit over emergency declaration
State joins 15 others in opposing Trump’s attempt to gain funds for border wall
SANTA TERESA — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Hector Balderas announced the state will sue President Donald Trump for “his inappropriate and overreaching declaration” of a national emergency to fund a border wall.
“The president’s absurd and dangerous declaration, a baldfaced end run around Congress and the basic tenets of our nation’s system of governance, will not stand,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement issued by her office Monday.
The lawsuit seeks to block the president from using the emergency declaration to divert federal funds.
“As Attorney General of a border state, I am appalled that President Trump would bypass the rule of law, manufacture
an ‘emergency,’ and weaken our national defense and readiness for a potential terrorist attack or catastrophic natural disaster,” Balderas said.
New Mexico joins 15 other states suing the president: California, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia. Maryland is the only state in the coalition suing the president that does not have a Democratic governor.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Citizens for Responsibility in Government were the first to file lawsuits on Friday shortly after the president’s emergency declaration.
After he failed to secure the full amount he wanted from Congress, Trump said he needs to divert federal funds to pay to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”
“Well, looks like it’s the only way he can do it,” said Billy Darnell, a retired Hidalgo County sheriff. The remote, rugged area has longbeen a drug-smuggling corridor.
In recent months, that stretch of New Mexico border has seen a spike in large groups of Central Americans crossing the border near Antelope Wells. The vast majority are parents with children and minors traveling on their own to the border to ask for asylum, a legal claim decided in immigration court.
“It’s a humanitarian problem,” Darnell said. He’s in favor of more border security.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get a wall here, and I’m not asking for a wall here. I’m asking for infrastructure, technology, equipment, roads on the border,” Darnell said. He lives just south of the remote small town of Animas.
“A wall is not practical here,” he said.
Near the busy border crossing in Santa Teresa, Border Industrial Association CEO Jerry Pacheco questioned the president’s emergency declaration and characterization of the border in crisis.
“There’s not anybody here who lives on the border who can look at you with a straight face to say this is a national emergency,” Pacheco said.
He supports the governor’s filing a lawsuit and is concerned about funding for military housing and other projects being “cannibalized for the wall.”
“The general sentiment I feel down here is everybody is sick of being used as a pawn or being used as a scapegoat to try to declare a national emergency,” Pacheco said.